My childhood best friend was a toy poodle named Fluffy. I’ll be editing to add a picture.

He lived to be 17.

When I was 10, I had been begging my parents for a cat for half my life. My aunt kind of tricked my mom into going with her to a poodle breeder so I could help pick out a puppy for “her”

I wanted a small, hyper, playful black puppy but she loved the nervous one shaking behind the couch so we got him. After she signed the papers, she told us the puppy was a gift for me and my dad. We were so unprepared, he spent the first few days in a laundry basket filled with blankets until we went and bought all the stuff. He hid for a while but quickly made himself at home. It’s been 3 years since we lost him and sometimes it still hurts like the day we had to have him put down.

Our current fur daughter is Jade. She has been shown on here and has her own Instagram and Facebook page.

She is a 3 1/2 year old rescue from MeowCat Rescue. She was a somewhat impulse adoption. We were discussing adopting a fur child after we lost our Cassandra, were browsing through Petco, I saw her and we decided to apply to adopt.

1 day later we got the call that our application was approved and there was an adoption event going on the next day. We left our 3 year old with the grandparents and went to check out the kittens. They left us in a small enclosed area with Jade and a very hyper and playful kitten. Jade was their oldest (6 months), was shy and had been through 3 fosters. We chose her and she has been the purrfect addition to our family since.

Today is day one. I came up with this over the course of just a few minutes. The purpose of doing this is to try to show that getting into a habit of writing a small amount daily isn’t as hard as it seems.

I’m going to follow the guidelines I wrote and am telling any reader they can join. I tried to make things easy enough for anyone to spend around 5 minutes and write.

I’ll be logging all answers and using #31daysofwritingchallenge as a hashtag to make this easier to find.

If anyone follows along with this challenge, use #31daysofwritingchallenge, I’d love to read other posts.

Instead of just simply challenging myself to write 30 posts, I think I’m going to come up with a writing challenge. This is a way of trying to help myself with coming up with topics and warming up my writing skills in a variety of topics. I’ll make this challenge public to see if anyone would be interested in joining me.

This exact challenge will be started on June 1, 2018 and anyone who is interested is welcome to jump in.

The goal of

Day 1- introduction to the challenge

Day 2- personal story

Day 3- post about a pet (current or growing up, if you have never had a per, someone else’s that you knew)

Day 4- post about a childhood pet

Day 5- Another animal related post, could even be a recipe

Day 6- your favorite recipe

Day 7- free day (anything you want)

Day 8- Family story from growing up

Day 9- Story about your mom

Day 10- story about your dad

Day 11- post a review on your favorite album

Day 12- review about your favorite movie

Day 13- review about your favorite book

Day 14- free day

Day 15- create a short story- any subject

Day 16- everyone has an area of expertise, write an educational piece about yours

Day 17- what is your dream job?

Day 18- talk about your hobbies. Which is your favorite?

Day 19- if you’re a parent, pick a topic and write about it. If you’re not a parent, free day- pick a topic and write about it

Day 20- pick your favorite animal and write an educational post about it.

I was always beyond disgusted about the whole concept. I still can’t say p**p without gagging but my 7 year old was born and we began a battle around a year with constipation. She’ll get so backed up at times, she has been hospitalized. There are times she’ll be so constipated, she’ll cry while doing it. Now, even though we do have medication help (Miralax), she is able to without the tears- and she’s now going on her own without prompting. That itself seems to be an accomplishment since I’ve seen quite a few kids with her condition who aren’t potty trained at all.

My youngest is the opposite, any animal cheese or milk and she’ll have diarrhea. We are finally getting the hang of her (more expensive) diet, and it’s paying off. She’ is now having more solid and less runny blow outs.

If you had told me when I was 20 that in 10 years, I would be monitoring and discussing poop with anyone (doctors etc), I’d have said you were out of your mind. I guess having kids changes things. I still almost puke when I smell vomit, but I can clean it up and deal with (kids) puking on me. I also can change a diaper (lost a job because I couldn’t change diapers- well, wouldn’t) and my oldest was my first diaper changing experience (and how I learned that boys aren’t the only ones who can pee straight up in the air…)

Since I’ll have a full week off, I have decided that the month of June I am going to try to do one post a day and come up with either 1 post or one article to submit to a magazine or blog every day through June.

Coming up with ideas shouldn’t be too difficult.

I have 11 more days in this month and I’ll be brainstorming topics (privately) and I’ll try to come up with 30 varied posts.